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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Professor Giancarlo Sestieri for the attribution, given on the basis of photographs. Professor Sestieri notes the similarity of the present picture with those previously published by Professor Richard Spear (Renaissance and Baroque from the Sciarra and Fiano Collections, Pennsylvania and Rome, 1972, pp. 74-5).
The fact that the view would appear to depict a real place, on the south side of the Ponte Molle, would imply that this picture represents an actual event, although which one remains obscure.
The artist is recorded as having originally been a pupil of Nicolas I van Eyck, before departing for Italy in circa 1660, where Lanzi records him as having been a pupil of Jacques Courtois. Before settling in Rome, however, he travelled in Turkey with the landscapist Zaurniter, an experience which presumably accounts for his bentveughel nickname of Janitzer (Giannizzero in Italian): the Janissary.
The fact that the view would appear to depict a real place, on the south side of the Ponte Molle, would imply that this picture represents an actual event, although which one remains obscure.
The artist is recorded as having originally been a pupil of Nicolas I van Eyck, before departing for Italy in circa 1660, where Lanzi records him as having been a pupil of Jacques Courtois. Before settling in Rome, however, he travelled in Turkey with the landscapist Zaurniter, an experience which presumably accounts for his bentveughel nickname of Janitzer (Giannizzero in Italian): the Janissary.